In a 72-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit directed the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday to clarify for Coinbase Global Inc. "how and when the federal securities laws apply to digital assets" like cryptocurrencies and tokens.

“We properly remand to the SEC to explain itself; it should not give yet another poor explanation in an already-long line of them,” Third Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas ruled in the concurrence. “New inventions create new fraud risks, and the agency needs to guard against them. But sporadically enforcing ill-fitting rules against crypto companies that are trying to follow the law goes way beyond fighting fraud. It targets a whole industry and risks de facto banning it.”